March 2009

We've got a lot to talk about this month, but first of all we'd like to thank everyone that visited our booth at the WPPI trade show last month! We had a lot of fun, and it was great meeting you all in person. A special thank you also goes out to Amy Gaerthofner, who helped man our booth on one of the days... she did awesome, and it was great having her support there.

Some of the things that we're talking about in the newsletter this month include CSS customization, an additional notification email address, a newly created support phone number, a discounted weekend in April, and a bunch of new slideshow music. So on with the show!

CSS Customization

In August we sent out a link to a survey where we asked everyone what they most wanted to be added to their storefronts, and the overwhelming majority of your answers included something along the lines of “more colors”, or “more font options”, or “different colored buttons”, etc. So we took all of your suggestions to heart, and we think we've come up with the perfect solution: full CSS customization abilities!

What does this mean? It means that you can now define your background colors (or use a background image), you can select your own fonts, and you can customize your own buttons. Basically, you now have control over a large portion of how your storefront looks, and you are free to mess around with it as much as you would like.

There is one very important caveat to this! We reserve the right to change the page layouts and back-end designs to any of our storefront pages at any time, which may result in your CSS being broken, and needing to be re-worked for the changed areas.

To upload and use your own CSS files, go into the “customize” page within the “Setup” tab, and scroll to the very bottom. At the bottom of the page there are a few short instructions, and an area to upload your custom CSS and image files.

Additional Notification Email Address

This one may not be as flashy or as cool as uploading your own CSS, but depending on the way you handle your orders, it may be something that you are excited to see put in. The way things work right now, each time you receive an order through your storefront you get an email sent to the email address you have provided to us for your company. But, for many of you, there is more than one person in your company that likes/needs to keep tabs on the orders, and forwarding them the notification emails all the time is kind of a pain. This new addition was put in for those of you in that situation... you can now include an additional email address to receive the order alert emails.

To add the additional notification email address go into the “company info” page within the “Setup” tab, and put the email address in the field labeled “Additional Notification Email Address” (it's found right underneath the “Company Email Address” field).

Phone Support

As many of you know, our email based support is really really fast. But for some long/complicated/urgent questions, emails just aren't as convenient as talking to someone on the phone. We still prefer handling most of your questions through email (it is much easier to refer to a previous email, than a previous phone call), but when you have the need to speak to someone live, feel free to give us call. The same people that answer your emails will be answering the support line, so you can be sure that you will be getting a well-informed answer.

The phone support hours are the same as our email support hours, making phone support available from 8am to 4pm (mountain time) Monday through Friday, excluding national Holidays.

The new support number is 435-258-6197.

Discounted Fees

It's time for us to start handing out some discounted fees again! This time the discount will be given (to everyone) from April 3rd through April 5th, and during that time, all storefront order fees will be dropped to just 6.5%!

If there is one thing that can be agreed upon by all of our top selling photographers, it's that putting on a sale will drive traffic to your site. People are hungry for a discount (especially right now), and putting on a sale during the discounted fee weekend might be a great kick-off method for jump-starting your spring season. So put that weekend (April 3-5) on your calendar, and hold a sale of your own!

New Slideshow Music

Those of you that have been with us since the beginning know that our original slideshow music offerings were kind of pathetic, and were limited to piano music only. A few people liked the music, but there were many others that turned up their noses and said “thanks, but no thanks” to what we had. So what did we do? What we always do, of course! We immediately started hunting for other songs that could be added to our lists, that would satisfy a much larger portion of our photographers.

For our latest musical additions we requested the assistance of some of our top selling photographers, that shoot a variety of different event types, to help us out. We think they did a pretty good job with their selections, and we believe that you will think so too. So, if you haven't been in to check out the slideshow music options in the last little while, go ahead and take some time to do it now. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Conclusion

So there you have it! Yet another great month at Instaproofs is over, and you now have a handful of new things to play with and explore.

For the next two or three months we are going to be focusing specifically on a list of about 50(!) items that have been requested in the past, and with next month's newsletter we'll clue you in as to how we're coming with that.

Good luck to all of you throughout this upcoming Spring season, and we'll see you here again in a month!

Film is not Dead WorkshopInstaproofs, Inc. is a proud sponsor of the upcoming “Film is not Dead Workshop” conducted by Jonathan Canlas. This workshop will be held from July 13th through July 15th, in the Mission District of San Francisco. Jonathan uses 100% film to create his look, and through this workshop he will share his expertise on how using film can open up new possibilities to a 100% digital shooter. In addition to film-related topics, this workshop will also touch on items such as how Instaproofs changed his business, and how to consistently generate more print sales. Jonathan is running a special pre-registration price for those who sign up before April 1st. For more information, click the banner above, or visit: http://jonathancanlasphotography.com/workshop

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And the Winners Are...

In January we sent out a call for images from anyone that wanted to be considered for a spot on our redesigned corporate website, and boy did we get a big response! Below is a compilation of the selected images that can now be seen on our corporate site. A big thank you goes out to everyone that submitted their images!